As is known in the art, cloud computing infrastructure systems contain a varied collection of servers (“hosts”), storage systems (“storage arrays”), networking devices, software modules and other components. Sets of hosts, networking devices, and storage arrays assembled in close proximity make up a unit of cloud infrastructure sometimes referred to as a pod (“pod”) of devices. The pod components are physically connected via Ethernet networks.
The logical configuration of pod components and networks creates platforms that are sold or leased as services from a menu of predefined configuration offerings (“service offerings”) for consumers of cloud computing. Offerings from vendors define the type, quantity, and quality of resources, such as “three servers with two network cards, 16 gigabytes of memory, four processors, and 20 gigabytes of boot disk space each, and a high performance 200 gigabyte storage volume shared between the servers.” The instantiation of such an offering is considered an “infrastructure service”. Defining services in this manner enables the consumer to use a selected portion of the host and storage resources within a given cloud infrastructure pod.
The instantiation of a service offering typically includes selected physical resources of the compute, storage, and compute layers into the logical concept of an “infrastructure service”, as discussed above. A separate management layer can also exist in the cloud infrastructure environment that engages in mediation with the physical cloud resource layers to instantiate and manage service offerings into cloud infrastructure services based on the desired resource types, quantities, and quality of resource.